


Hortus circumcapitis: an epidemiological approach

by feroxargentea



Category: due South
Genre: Canadian Shack, Crack, Flower Crowns, M/M, flashfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-08
Updated: 2020-02-08
Packaged: 2021-02-22 10:08:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,212
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22614472
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/feroxargentea/pseuds/feroxargentea
Summary: Pure silliness, written for due South Flower Crown Day 2020.
Relationships: Benton Fraser/Ray Kowalski
Comments: 35
Kudos: 49
Collections: due South/Canadian Six Degrees Flower Crown Day 2020





	Hortus circumcapitis: an epidemiological approach

**Author's Note:**

> This is ThisAintBC's fault.  
> [Edited to add: This was written before the 2020 pandemic happened. Similarities are genuinely accidental.]

“Hmm.” Fraser frowned at himself in the mirror and pulled his hat down as far as it would go. He heard a snort from behind him. “Well, I'm sorry to upset your delicate sensibilities, Diefenbaker, but I don't have time for hair dye. It's this or the bobble hat Mrs. O'Rourke knitted.”

Dief huffed and stalked away towards the office door.

“That's what I thought.” Fraser went back to adjusting his Stetson, and his back was still turned when there was a loud thump and Ray came crashing through the doorway.

“Fra—” Ray began, and stumbled knee-first into the desk, narrowly missing Dief. “Ow! Fraser, you gotta fix this.”

Fraser offered him a hand up. “Good morning, Ray. Fix what?”

“It's _not_ a good morning, it's _so_ not a good morning. Of all possible mornings, this is the ungoodest one.” Ray bent to examine the knees of his jeans, and Fraser was just stooping to see what he was looking at when Ray straightened up again abruptly, almost banging heads with him. “What are you—hey, no, it's not my pants, my pants are fine! It's my, uh...”

He pointed to his head, where he was sporting a stripy woollen hat. And yes, some small corner of Fraser's mind had already registered that the hat was there, and that wearing any sort of headgear wasn't a particularly Ray-like thing to do, but now he noticed that it was very tight and pulled down very hard.

“Ah,” he said. “Oh dear.”

Ray tugged the hat off slowly, revealing the state of his scalp. Fraser tried very hard not to stare.

“Ah,” he said again, just as a placeholder while he weighed up what other responses were least likely to get him punched.

Ray scowled. “That'd better be Canadian for 'I know what this is and I know how to fix it', Frase, 'cause that's the only kind of 'ah' I need right now. It's the garden centre case, right? Gotta be that. I told you, I _told_ you there was something weird about that whole thing. No one stages a full-scale heist in a garden centre. Not with dumper trucks! What are they gonna steal, wholesale hydrangeas?”

“Actually, Ray, some containerized specimens can be quite valuable. Acers, for instance, can be...well, that's not important. What's important is—”

“The white stuff, right?” Ray interrupted. “All those sacks of powder we broke open, chemicals or whatever. I inhale some kinda fertilizer and a week later my hair's...my hair's like _this.”_

Fraser cleared his throat, carefully not looking at the _this._ “Well, yes, crash-landing on a stockpile of rooting hormones was unfortunate, but that would only affect someone already predisposed to...” He trailed off as he saw Ray peering at his Stetson.

“Fraser?”

“What?”

“You going grey?”

“Not as such, Ray, no.”

“Take your hat off.”

Fraser set his jaw. “I prefer it on.”

“Hey, I showed you mine!”

Fraser hesitated, calculating his chances of sidestepping Ray and making a run for the Consulate's front door. Then he sighed and removed his hat.

Ray stepped closer, tipping his head to one side. “What's all that weird grey stuff round your temples?”

Fraser touched it gingerly, hoping to find it had somehow withered and died back since he'd last checked. It hadn't.

“It's a species of lichen,” he admitted. “I suppose one could consider it an encouraging sign that particle emissions in Chicago must finally be on the decrease, as lichen can only flourish to this extent in clean air.”

“Huh. So what're all the red things?”

“Chokecherries, apparently, but they're not...”

“Eww!” Ray spun away and spat something out into the trashcan. “Yuuuick.”

“...ripe,” Fraser concluded, taking a belated step back. “And they're not usually eaten unsweetened, either.”

Ray scrubbed a forefinger across his tongue and spat again. “No kidding. So, what, this plant stuff is a thing? A known thing, that you can fix? 'Cause I dunno how you do things here in Little Canada, but I can't turn up at the Two-Seven looking like I'm running for Miss Illinois.”

Fraser checked an impulse to ask why not. Ray, he'd learned by now, could be very touchy about his masculinity. “Well, no, I can't actually fix it, and in my experience there's little point attempting any sort of pruning, as that will only encourage bushier regrowth. But on the plus side, it's a temporary affliction. The best course of action might be simply to wait it out.”

Ray narrowed his eyes. “In your experience? So you've had this before?”

“Not exactly; the species vary.” Fraser tugged at his collar. “But in my defence, it lies dormant for at least fifty weeks of the year, and I had no idea it was infectious.”

“ _Infectious?”_

“Well, given that it doesn't appear to be communicable in the normal course of daily interaction, and given your current state,” Fraser waved a hand at the decorative effusions encircling Ray's scalp, “I can only assume that it's transmissible via other forms of, um...”

“You're shitting me!”

“Not as such, no.”

“It's an _STD?”_

“It would appear to be, yes.”

“Great!” Ray flung his arms wide. “That's just great! I gotta go tell Welsh I can't come to work this week because my boyfriend gave me Canadian herpes!”

“You might want to work on the wording. Perhaps something a little less emotive? But as I said, it's temporary. The traditional remedy is to retire to some convenient, out-of-the-way spot—a cabin, for example—and wait for the phenomenon to return to its dormant state.” Fraser paused. “You do have vacation time to take, Ray. And I do have a suitable cabin we could use.”

Ray snorted. “I bet you do. Up north, in the far frozen whatever?”

“In the Yukon, yes. It would be two weeks at the most,” Fraser added, trying not to sound too hopeful. “Two weeks that could be spent doing...whatever we liked.”

Ray considered this for a few moments. Then he cocked his head. “Y'know, the grey kinda suits you.”

“It does?”

“Kinda, yeah. It's kinda hot.”

“Oh.” Fraser thought about this. “Yours is very pretty too.”

“ _Pretty?”_

Fraser touched a careful fingertip to one of Ray's blush-pink rosebuds, where it nestled just above his ear among baby-blue love-in-a-mist and delicate purple sweet peas. The bud dipped under his touch, unfurling slightly. This close up, the combined scent was heady.

“Attractive, then,” he said. “It's very _you_. In the manliest possible way, of course.”

“Fraser?”

“Yes?”

Ray tugged his hat back on, grinning. “Just go book us the tickets.”

Fraser took a deep breath and turned away before he was tempted to do things an RCMP officer really shouldn't do while he was on duty. “Understood.”

He picked up his own hat and headed for the office door, ignoring the tiny nagging voice of his conscience reminding him that he could have suggested treatment with antibiotics or antiviral drugs instead. If Ray was happy to spend two weeks with him in the Yukon, who was he to argue?

Two weeks in the Yukon, with a man who thought lichen was “hot”. Fraser flipped his Stetson over a couple of times and wedged it firmly back onto his head. Life really didn't get better than this.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Decorative Effusions](https://archiveofourown.org/works/22627177) by [mific](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mific/pseuds/mific)




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